The ghost of Faéthor Ferenczy, whose place was the crumbling, deserted, overgrown ruins of a house close to Ploiesti in Romania, contacted Harry and offered to help. The damage done to Harry’s mind was the work of The Dweller, Harry Jr, a vampire with hugely enhanced mentalist powers. If Harry would now allow Faéthor’s spirit into his mind, perhaps that ‘father’ of vampires could remove the blockage and unlock the closed-off regions. Harry did not like the idea (to allow a vampire, this vampire, into his mind?) and knew it was an experiment fraught with the most terrifying dangers. But beggars can’t be choosers.
As to why Faéthor should want to help: he could not bear the thought of his bloodson, Janos, up and about in the world while he was nothing but a fading memory, shunned even by the dead. He wanted Janos put down again, indeed he actively desired to be the instrument of that termination. And Harry Keogh was the only one who could do it. At least, this was the explanation which Faéthor offered to Harry . . .
In Romania, Harry slept overnight in the ruins of Faéthor’s last refuge, and while he slept the father of vampires entered his mind and reopened certain mental ‘doors’ which Harry Jr had closed there. Waking up, Harry discovered his deadspeak returned to him. Now he could contact the long-dead mathematician Möbius and have him enter his mind and, he hoped, give him back his numeracy and mastery of the so-called Möbius Continuum. But Faéthor had lied: once inside Harry’s mind the vampire would not leave it – the Necroscope now had an unwelcome tenant.
Finally, at Janos’s castle in the Zarandului Mountains of Transylvania, Harry recovered his powers in full, returned Janos to dust and committed the spirit of Faéthor to an eternity of emptiness and utter loneliness in the infinite future time-streams of the Möbius Continuum.
But his victory was not without cost.
Strange urges are part of Harry now, and stranger hungers. His life-thread unwinds as before into the unending future of Möbius time. Except . . . where once that life-thread was pure blue, as are the threads of all entirely human beings, now it is tinged with red!
Part One
1
Charnel Knowledge
‘Harry.’ Darcy Clarke’s voice was twitchy on the ‘phone, but he was trying hard to control it. ‘There’s a problem we could use some help with. Your kind of help.’
Harry Keogh, Necroscope, might or might not know what was bothering the head of British E-Branch, and it might or might not have to do with him directly. ‘What is it, Darcy?’ he said, speaking softly.
‘It’s murder,’ the other answered, and now his twitchi-ness came on strong, shaking his voice. ‘It’s bloody awful murder, Harry! My God, I never saw anything like it!’
Darcy Clarke had seen a lot in his time and Harry Keogh knew it, so that this was a statement he found hard to believe. Unless of course Clarke was talking about . . . ‘My kind of help, you said?’ Harry’s attention was suddenly riveted to the ‘phone. ‘Darcy, are you trying to tell me – that – ?’
‘What?’ The other didn’t understand him at first, but then he did. ‘No, no – Christ, no – it’s not the work of a vampire, Harry! But some kind of monster, certainly. Oh, human enough – but a monster, too.’
Harry relaxed a little, but a very little.
He’d been expecting a call from E-Branch sooner or later. This could be it: some sort of clever trap. Except . . . Darcy had always been his friend; Harry didn’t think he would act on something – not even something like that – without checking it out every which way first. And even then Harry couldn’t see Darcy coming after him with a crossbow and hardwood bolt, a machete, a can of petrol. No, he’d have to talk to him first, get Harry’s side of it. But in the end . . .
. . . The head of the Branch knew almost as much about vampires as Harry did, now. And he’d know, too, that there was no hope. They’d been friends, fighting on the same side, so Harry guessed it wouldn’t be Darcy’s finger on the trigger. But someone’s, certainly.